O`brien New York`s Dream Qb

December 13, 1985|By Sam Smith, Chicago Tribune.

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — Ken O`Brien has this dream, and it has nothing to do with making a million dollars a year or being the Most Valuable Player in the National Football League or even winning the Super Bowl.

Sure, O`Brien may accomplish all of those things soon. In his first full season as a starter in the NFL, the quarterback-you-have-never-he ard-of has become the league`s top-ranked passer with a 99.6 rating. He has completed 61.7 percent of his passes, thrown for 24 touchdowns, been intercepted just 7 times and led the New York Jets to a 10-4 record and a tie for first in the American Conference East Division.

But for this rugged, strong-armed, 6-foot-4-inch, 210-pound Californian, it is the desire to play in that one perfect football game, where every pass is completed and every play works flawlessly, that drives him to study game films long after his teammates have gone home and to beg receivers to stay late in practice.

``Kenny actually believes he should be able to complete every pass he throws,`` said Jets` personnel director Mike Hickey, who drew a lot of criticism after the club selected O`Brien ahead of Dan Marino on the first round in the 1983 draft. ``It`s not that he thinks he`s better than everyone else. It`s just that he believes that if everybody does their job and he does his, every pass will be completed.``

It is that kind of attitude that led O`Brien to California-Davis, a Division II school that does not offer athletic scholarships. O`Brien compiled a 3.3 grade-point average as a prelaw student there.

``Ken really didn`t want to go to a Division I school,`` said his mother, Catherine. ``He didn`t want to be obligated to the football program, although he threw every day and did all the things he would have done had he gone to a Division I school.``

``One of the reasons I went to Cal-Davis was because there were no scholarships there,`` said O`Brien, 25. ``Everyone was there because they enjoyed playing football.``

``I remember asking Ken one day what he wanted to do with his life,``

recalled Cal-Davis coach Jim Sochor. ``He always was a strong student with a bright future, working summers for a law firm, and his father, an orthopedic surgeon. But he said: `Coach, I want to throw the ball. I just love to throw the ball.` ``

And he`ll be doing that against the Bears Saturday in a game the Jets consider a ``must win`` situation because they are in a fight not only for a division title but for a wild-card spot in the playoffs.

They wouldn`t be there if not for the progress of O`Brien, who will be starting just his 20th pro game Saturday. In the last five, he has passed for more than 300 yards four times and thrown for 13 TDs against just 2 interceptions.

``O`Brien is an excellent quarterback who throws the ball very accurately,`` said Tampa Bay coach Leeman Bennett after O`Brien was 23-of-30 for 367 yards and 5 touchdowns against the Bucs. ``And because he`s so accurate, he doesn`t often give the defense a chance to make a lot of big plays.``

But one thing O`Brien is not good at is scrambling, and in trying to make every pass play work, he has been accused of holding the ball too long. He has been sacked 55 times, more than any other quarterback in the league, and has lost 9 fumbles, half the team`s total.

``I`m not saying he hasn`t held the ball too long sometimes and should have taken off,`` said Jets` quarterback coach Zeke Bratkowski. ``But what a lot of people fail to realize is how many times he`s made things happen by waiting and finding an alternate receiver.``

Even around the O`Brien household, Ken has made things happen for some time. Like when the quiet, intense 7th grader decided he wanted to play football.

``Football was probably the only sport we never encouraged him to play,`` said his mother. ``Ken liked all sports, but his father saw so many football injuries that we didn`t want him to play football.``

His parents still cannot rest. ``I pray through the whole game that he comes out of it alive,`` Catherine O`Brien said. ``Last week we talked, and I asked him if he was having fun. He said he was, but I asked how he could be with all those people on top of him every week.``

At Cal-Davis, where he transferred after one year at Sacramento State, O`Brien broke all the passing records in Sochor`s pro-style offense. But when his name was called on draft day, ahead of Marino (but after John Elway, Jim Kelly, Tony Eason and Todd Blackledge), New York fans booed. ``It didn`t bother me,`` said O`Brien with typical equanimity, ``because I was out in California.``

But it did bother him when he sat on the bench behind Richard Todd in 1983. And when Todd was traded before the 1984 season to give O`Brien his big chance, it bothered him even more when he lost the starting job because of a celebrated bar incident in New York`s Studio 54. After he and Mark Gastineau endured a four-week misdemeanor assault trial, O`Brien was acquitted, but the ordeal changed him.